Callahan’s Cleveland Diary

What he said… pretty much.

Right after Jackson’s election, I wrote:

…Jackson has a rare chance to solidify a base on both sides of the river and both sides of the city’s racial divide. But he’s not going to accomplish this through leadership deals, task forces, summit meetings, or grand top-down schemes. He can accomplish it by going back out to his voters on both sides of town, listening to them seriously, dealing with them forthrightly and honestly, and offering them effective connections to City Hall and to each other.

I could have added that he won’t do it by sucking up to Channel 19 or Regina Brett. But it wouldn’t hurt for the Quiet Mayor to start pushing himself out to a lot more block meetings and church basements this Fall. Quietly.

P.S. As usual, a useful public discussion of crime and what to do about it would be much easier if the media gave us less speechifying and speculation, and more actual information to think about.

NEOCANDO, for example, has Cleveland crime data, mostly from police reports, going back from 2006 though the ’90s. Apparently the Plain Dealer gets much of this same information on a current basis (since they have up-to-date homicide numbers, for example.)

So, why haven’t I seen some version of this map in recent analyses of violent crime increases?

(Click for full size)

The NEOCANDO statistics I’ve mapped here show that homicides and aggravated assaults (which include attempted homicides) did, indeed, increase in most Cleveland neighborhoods in 2006 compared to a low point in 2001-2002. But not in every neighborhood, and not as dramatically in most neighborhoods as in a few hot spots: notably Glenville, Hough, St. Clair-Superior, Central and Mt. Pleasant. Deadly attacks in some neighborhoods were down in 2006 — strikingly lower in my own Brooklyn Centre neighborhood, for example, despite the presence of kids with guns.

Now this particular year-to-year comparison doesn’t tell us all that much by itself. If we had the same numbers for 2007, for example, how would the map change? Suppose we added in all crimes committed with guns (like my backyard robbery) on the theory that each was just one finger twitch away from murder? Or suppose we graphed the year-by-year trend for each neighborhood, instead of just picking two years to snapshot? Would the pattern look strikingly different?

We’d probably see something new with each of these tweaks. But they all involve adding data to the picture to make it more complete. You know — reporting.

Meanwhile, just from the map I’ve got here, I’d hypothesize the following: If the city’s chief concern is the spike in murders and attempted murders, spreading a few more patrol officers evenly around all 35 neighborhoods will not address it. More than half of the 2001-2006 murder-and-assault increase happened in just five neighborhoods — nearly 75% in just ten. Shouldn’t the police (and everyone else) be asking: what specifically is happening in those five or ten neighborhoods and how can we intervene to stop it from reaching the point of bloodshed?

My guess is that exactly this discussion is ongoing among police, politicians and community activists in Glenville, Hough, Central, etc. My guess is that Frank Jackson (who lives in Central) is totally clued in to it. If not — well, that would be a big concern to me as a voter, and I’d want to know about it. I’d consider that a very legitimate subject for the PD or the TV people to look into.

But I can’t see how a “town meeting” on Channel 19, or a City Club speech, or more Red Room press conferences, or mouthing more pious generalities for Ms. Brett’s column will add any value to the situation at all.

P.S.S.  See Roger Bundy’s thoughtful response to the above at Equanimous Philosopher.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 6:35 am and is filed under Neighborhood, Poor Cleveland. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.